Saturday, June 6, 2015

NEW FRIDGE WOES

Love it! Too bad it has problems.

It
seemed to me that as my parents grew older, the effort to update their home and belongings just didn’t go well. I hate to think that I’m getting to that
point. Perhaps “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the best adage ever.

As
readers will know, in April we went to Sears and bought new appliances -- dishwasher, refrigerator,
washer, and dryer. Initially we had our trials, and the saga with the fridge
continues. It was delivered May 5 -- just a month ago.

Immediately,
Mike began to mutter that it wasn’t cold enough. Hoping he was wrong, I assured him we just needed to adjust the settings. He still didn’t think it was cold enough, and to prove
his point he bought a refrigerator thermometer. After a
couple of days of taking readings from shelf to shelf, re-adjusting the temp
controls and recording temps again, I had to admit he was right. On the lowest
settings the fridge does not get colder than 40 – and is often quite a bit
warmer.

So,
I called Sears on Friday, May 29. After explaining the issue to the tech, she
scheduled repair for Friday, June 5, between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. Parts were
ordered and shipped to our address. Though we have other things to do this weekend, we really came to town specifically to keep the repair appointment.

Long
story short, we waited for the repairman all afternoon, and at 5:00, I initiated a call to Sears
customer service. Ten minutes later the repairman from “Sears Home Repair” called.
He apologized that he was running late but said he was on his way. (Who would
think a service guy would work beyond 5:00, especially on Friday?) I explained
that we were leaving for an evening engagement and couldn’t wait for him. He
told me that he is booked out so far (not a recommendation for Sears
appliances) that he could not immediately reschedule and had no idea when he could
come -- certainly not this next week. And I told him that we spend
summers at a second home and had already been inconvenienced by this repair
call on a brand new refrigerator. That’s when he said, “You have 90 days to
return it” – which is, of course, what we really want to do.

It’s
not over yet – not until I sing. KW

[The second picture was taken at Wawawai on the Snake River where we picnicked with local geocachers last night.]

2 comments:

I do not believe the trials necessarily correlate to age. Either age causes folks to forget the trials that have always been or things have just generally gotten harder. We had no refrigerator (at ALL) for a couple of weeks as the first one that came was badly dented. We sent it right back on the truck and survived another week without any way of preserving food. And then the refrigerator was noisy and I got in there my own self and fastened down the compressor better to solve the problem. What an ordeal!

So sorry you've had this hassle with your frig. There are lemons out there, that's for sure. John and Karen got all Sears appliances when they remodeled last year and all worked out well except their stove top. I think she ended up returning several for various reasons before she got one that worked the way she wanted. Don't worry about sending this one back--you paid for something that was supposed to work and doesn't.